BPA Questions — Boba Guys - Serving the highest quality bubble milk tea in the world

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3491 19th St
San Francisco, CA 94110
USA

415-967-2622

We grew up drinking milk tea and to this day are still obsessed about it. We started Boba Guys as a way to share the milk tea we remember from our childhood (only this time with fresh ingredients; none of the powdered stuff).

We use only the finest ingredients: Straus Family Creamery organic milk accompanied with homebrewed heirloom organic tea from Five Mountains. Our syrup and almond jelly is homemade and we use Grade A balls. (We just like saying that. )

BPA Questions

BPA Questions

Recent news articles have discussed potential concerns regarding bisphenol A or “BPA” levels in our boba.  After we read the PlasticList.org study referenced in these recent news articles, we contacted PlasticList.org to better understand their findings. We subsequently conducted our own study focusing on our proprietary ingredients first – the water supply, sugar, tapioca balls, and tea. We also tested containers, both metal and Cambro (BPA-free) brewing containers.

A quick summary of our discovery:

  1. After testing 50+ additional samples, we were unable to reproduce the outlier 30 ng/g BPA result referenced in the PlasticList.org study that the media and public have focused on. This single result – which was sensationalized by the media and viral pundits – is an extreme outlier and not representative of typical findings in either our tests or PlasticList’s tests of our beverages.

  2. Committed to finding the entry point for BPA, we focused our investigation on the ingredients and packaging used before they reached our supply chain.

  3. Reports from the independent labs we engaged showed “No Detection” for our ingredients and packaging with two exceptions. Receipt/thermal printer paper, and brown sugar (used to make our housemade syrups), both of which were purchased off-the-shelf from third parties, had slightly elevated levels of BPA.  We believe these to be the likely sources of BPA found in the boba analyzed by PlasticList.org in its initial study.

 
 

Plasticlist.org also conducted a second round of testing of our boba, and ultimately concurred with our findings.

Since conducting our own study, we have changed our thermal printer paper to a BPA-free version and our brown sugar to one contained in BPA-free packaging.  We are confident this resolves any BPA-related issues.  The safety and well-being of our customers are our highest priority.  Thank you for your patience and support the past couple months as we unpacked the PlasticList.org study. Cheers to everyone who worked on this.